The Empty Flat
by Isilien Elenihin
Summary: It was a good life he was building. A solid, stable life. He had a good job, a decent flat, and good friends. Mari was kind, interesting, and generous, and he was lucky to have her in his life. Until one day, when, quite suddenly—she wasn't. Mild John/Rose, Heavy Doctor/Rose, Mild Jack/Everyone.
1. Chapter 1

A/N: Nothing you recognize belongs to me! Enjoy! :D

Oh, and I apologize for the long silence. I got married! Yup, I'm officially a Mrs. now. More fic is forthcoming!_  
_

* * *

_Well, who else is there? I mean you lot, all you do is eat chips, go to bed and watch telly, while all the time underneath you there's a war going on!_

_~The Doctor, "Rose"_

The days that changed John Watson's life started without fanfare or acclaim or any kind of warning that something extraordinary was going to happen. The day he met Mike Stanford in the park had started out miserably—he'd spent the morning contemplating his steadily dwindling funds and the necessity for immediately procuring a job when he wasn't staring at the blank screen of the blog his therapist seemed to think would help ease him back into 'civilian' life. It had ended with him meeting the most intriguing, infuriating, brilliant man he'd ever had the privilege of knowing, a man who had shown him that beneath the surface of the mundane existence of most people a battle was raging every moment of every day. Sherlock Holmes had opened John's eyes—and now he was dead. Dead and dishonored, mocked by the press and, once the scandal had worn itself into old news, forgotten by everyone except those who actually knew him: Mrs. Hudson, their landlady (not their housekeeper), D.I. Gregory Lestrade, John, and Molly Hooper. He refused to include Mycroft in his list. He hadn't forgiven Sherlock's older, supposedly cleverer brother for his part in the detective's death. If Mycroft hadn't practically written out Sherlock's entire biography for James Moriarty the consulting criminal wouldn't have been able to craft a story so plausible that everyone seemed inclined to believe him. As far as John Watson was concerned, Mycroft Holmes had killed his younger brother.

The question that loomed before him after the funeral, after he moved his belongings out of the flat they had shared and visited Sherlock's grave, was 'what next?' What did you do when your best friend was dead? He'd been swept up in Sherlock's life almost as soon as he'd met the man, and for three years his focus had been on his volatile friend. Life, however, gave him a limited time to muse and to mourn. His bank account was depressingly low and unless he wanted to take Harry up on her offer to share a flat (and wouldn't that be fun?) he needed to find a job.

So he did. He took a position at a clinic in the heart of the city that reminded him a bit too much of Sarah but paid enough to cover his expenses. He took the tube to work and wrote his blog (although readership had dropped significantly since Sherlock's 'exposure') and ate his meals alone in front of the television. He met Molly and Greg for drinks once a month, had tea with Mrs. Hudson every week (she worried, he could tell), and ignored the curious looks and hushed murmurs of his coworkers. In no time at all John Watson, M.D, former blogger for Sherlock Holmes, found himself in a peculiar sort of rhythm that felt almost normal.

* * *

The day that began a chain of events that would change his life again, the day that would lead him back into an adrenaline-saturated struggle beyond even what Sherlock had shown him began with a series of unfortunate events, the end result of which convinced him that he should cut his losses whilst he still could and return home. He had sick days to spare, as he generally disliked taking time off—it allowed him to dwell on what his life had become and that made him maudlin and that was unacceptable. So it was that he found himself in a small café a few blocks from his customary tube station ordering breakfast. John was a bit distracted as he found a seat, the man behind the counter reminded him of Angelo which reminded him of Sherlock, and he failed to notice the brunette woman behind him until they collided and he proceeded to knock the cup of coffee she carried from her hand.

"Oh!" she exclaimed as the paper cup hit the floor and coffee began to pool around their shoes. Or maybe it was because he'd grabbed her around the waist to keep her from falling. It had been a reflex, like ducking when someone yelled 'down!' or saying 'bless you' when someone sneezed. She was pretty in an unusual sort of way, he noted idly—her mouth was strong and too large for her face, her nose was straight and small, and her eyes were wide and brown. She was dressed like most of the young professionals in the café, but there was something about her that didn't seem to fit.

He pulled his hands back once he was sure that she was steady on her feet. "Sorry," he apologized with a rueful smile. "I wasn't paying attention. Let me buy you another."

She glanced at the slim watch wrapped around her wrist and grimaced. "Thanks for the offer, mate, but I'm already late." She cocked her head to the side and studied him for a moment. John had to fight the urge to fidget—he felt like she was seeing right through him—but then she apparently found what she was looking for, because she smiled and grabbed one of the napkins from a nearby table. "Tell you what," she began as she scrawled something onto the napkin. "I get off work at five. Meet me back here and you can make up it, yeah?" She pressed the napkin into his hand and wrapped his fingers around it. Her hands were soft, John noted, but the fingertips were calloused. Her nails were short but painted a bright, cheery pink. They scraped across his palm and sent shivers down his spine.

And then she was halfway across the room. He blinked. Had time skipped? Or was he really that distracted by a pretty face? She turned as she opened the door and waved at him before disappearing into the sea of people beyond the café's doors. John looked at the napkin, unfolded it, and could not stop a smile from flitting across his face. 'Mari Prentice,' the napkin read, followed by a phone number.

* * *

John met her later, of course. How could he resist? He'd run into her (literally) by chance and spoken to her for less than a minute, but there was something strangely familiar about the whole situation (and he refused to draw parallels between that instance and the day he met Sherlock but his mind made the connections anyway). It was ten past when he walked through the café's door again. She was already there, sitting at a table by the window. John was glad; it gave him time to consider her. Living with Sherlock Holmes, the man who noticed everything, left its marks on him and one of those was a new appreciation for minutiae. _Something_ struck him when they first met, but it was a whirl of awkward apologies and spilled coffee and unexpected phone numbers.

She, Mari Prentice, sat with her head propped on her hand. Her elbow rested on the table and her chin on her palm. She was turned slightly away from John and the rest of the café's occupants. She was alone, he realized, that's what was odd. She was surrounded by people but she was completely alone. The space around her was undisturbed; no one bumped into her or talked to her or even looked at her most of the time. Well, no one besides him.

Mari smiled when she saw him and he was forced to revise his estimation of her. She was _beautiful_ when she smiled—but it didn't reach her eyes. "It occurred to me," she said as he sat down across from her, "that I didn't get your name this morning."

"It's John," he replied with a crooked smile. "John Watson."

Mari held out her hand. "Nice to meet you John Watson."

She worked at the British Library. "Acquisitions," she replied when he asked her where, but her passion was poetry. Her tastes were eclectic—she read the War Poets (T.S. Eliot, Wilfred Owen, Siegfried Sassoon) and the Imagists (Amy Lowell), although she wouldn't touch Ezra Pound. "He was an arrogant, anti-Semitic bigot," she'd declared forcefully.

"Eliot was anti-Semitic," John had pointed out, grateful that he'd dated a lit major in Uni, back before he'd decided that yes, he did want to be a doctor, and that the best place for him was a hole in the middle of the desert.

Mari smiled at him over the rim of her mug. "Yeah, but his poetry makes up for it," she replied.

They stayed away from heavy topics—why she moved through a crowd like Moses parting the waters, why his jaw twitched every time John saw a copy of the Daily Mail, why both of them were sitting in a café talking to a complete stranger. They talked about politics and poetry and patients, about the weather (unusually mild), about nothing at all. He was enjoying himself, John realized, more than he had in a long time. Drinks with Lestrade and Molly were heavy on the reminiscing—well—they reminisced. He drank and stared at the wall. Mrs. Hudson never wanted to talk about it. She'd been close with Sherlock, closer even than he had, and she missed the infuriating man. The shadows of him were heavy everywhere John went and it was nice, it was _so_ nice to be able to breathe without the ghost of his friend saturating his lungs.

So John met her again, and again after that, and again after that, and soon they were meeting for lunch, and then dinner, and then she was following him home to watch a documentary he'd recorded. Because when they were talking (about anything, really, except the carefully marked folder of subjects that were most definitely OFF LIMITS) he could be himself—angry, sad, just a bit bitter, and occasionally funny, sarcastic, and rarely…happy—without the threat of judgment. She knew who he was, he could tell, but she didn't push him. She didn't ask him about Sherlock or what had happened; she simply accepted that Moriarty was real, that it was all real. He asked her about it once, when they met on their respective lunch breaks and she looked at him like he was daft. "Of course he's real," she said like it was obvious, like anyone who thought otherwise was a blithering moron, like she'd said it a million times before. John wondered what impossible thing she'd been forced to defend.

* * *

John took her to meet Mrs. Hudson first. Every Sunday afternoon he had tea with his former landlady back at 221A Baker Street. It was the closest he'd go to the flat. He couldn't bring himself to actually touch the cool brass doorknob or push in the door (for fear it would creak as it always did and he'd be thrown back into what had been his life) and go inside. He wasn't that man anymore. He wasn't the John Watson who ran around, playing (in turn) nursemaid and friend and soundboard and gopher to Sherlock Holmes. He was Dr. John Watson who ate lunch with Mari at a different place every day, who met her for coffee after work, who put up a fuss about watching EastEnders but was secretly addicted. He was moving on. He was building a life. He was healing—and he thought that he was stronger for it.

Mrs. Hudson, as he predicted, adored Mari and it was easier to breathe with her there. They drank tea and ate biscuits. She rested her hand on his leg and he rested his hand atop hers. They didn't hold hands, although they frequently walked arm-in-arm. Whenever he tried to lace their fingers together something passed over her face and she pulled away like she'd been burnt. He got the message (bad memory) and didn't press. She didn't ask him about the cane that leant up against the corner of the sitting room in his flat, or about the service revolver he kept loaded in the nightstand.

They talked about the weather and Mari's job at the British Library. John complained about a few of his more colorful clients, and Mrs. Hudson mentioned that someone had rented the flat upstairs. "A nice-looking young man," she observed. "But I don't see him much. Shut in, I expect, one of those agrophobics."

"Agoraphobics, you mean?" John clarified.

"That's it, dear," Mrs. Hudson agreed.

Mari cocked her head to the side. She looked—troubled—and she was distracted for most of the rest of their visit. Mrs. Hudson invited them back, of course, and bid them goodnight warmly.

"Everything all right?" John asked after the door had closed, as they walked arm-in-arm to the tube station down the street.

Mari gave him a bright smile that he didn't believe for one second. "Course it is, why wouldn't it be?"

He looked at her long and hard, but she seemed determined to sweep whatever had bothered her under the rug. He backed off with a sigh. He valued her empathy and her instinctive knowledge of when to press—but there were chasms between them, entire lives that neither knew and she, at least, seemed to have no intention to bridge them. And then he saw a man in a long, dark coat turn the corner ahead of them and felt something clench inside his chest, like an iron band around his lungs. Well. Maybe he didn't either.

* * *

John wasn't sure who was more surprised when he brought Mari to the pub—Molly or Greg. It was for different reasons, of course. Greg had been half-convinced that John was in love with Sherlock (like most of the police force, it seemed). Molly knew better, but she was shocked that he'd let someone he was interested in meet _them_. Greg spent most of the night talking about a series of unsolved murders; serial killers, he thought, and moaned about how Sherlock would have been all over that case. It was an odd one: the people were seemingly unconnected except that they all lived in major population centers and the flats next to theirs had been recently vacated.

Mari seemed interested, which struck John as odd. He hadn't pegged her as a crime show person and she'd never expressed more than mild interest over anything reported in the papers. He'd taken to looking for news of the criminal world mostly out of habit. He couldn't count the number of times he'd combed the papers whilst Sherlock checked his phone and the television, on the prowl for something to occupy his mind. Greg refused to go into detail. It was, after all, an open case and he was legally prohibited from talking about it.

Once again John had to remind himself that he wasn't the only one who suffered from Sherlock's death and dishonor. Lestrade had been formally reprimanded. He'd allowed Sherlock to consult on hundreds of cases. That didn't look good after he was framed as a fraud. And Molly, well, everyone knew that Molly carried a torch for Sherlock. Still, it was good to talk to them. They kept him anchored, kept him grounded in the knowledge that he wasn't crazy.

He and Mari said goodnight around 11 o'clock. They both had to be up early but, as was his custom, he walked her to her door and kissed her goodnight. It was chaste, just a soft press of lips. She seemed to shy away from sex, and if he was honest he could get that anywhere. The companionship he found in her, though, was hard to come by, so he was content to remain at rest.

It was a good life he was building. A solid, stable life. He had a good job, a decent flat, and good friends. Mari was kind, interesting, and generous, and he was lucky to have her in his life. Until one day, when, quite suddenly—she wasn't.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: So I think this is going to be a bit more than three parts. Maybe-four? I'm thinking four now, if only because I seem to have taken a long time talking about John's life when Mari went missing. :D Anyway, enjoy!

* * *

The days that changed John Watson's life were often quite ordinary, at least at the beginning, so it came as no surprise that the day that his world once again stood on its head began with a hangover. He woke gradually with the suspicion that someone was tap dancing inside his skull. His blood roared through his veins, his head was pounding fit to burst, and his mouth felt like cotton wool. The insistent beeping of his alarm clock felt like a sonic attack and he fumbled for the 'snooze' button with a groan. Bloody hell, what did he _do_ last night? He tried to force his struggling brain to turn back to the previous day's events, but was left with disjointed shards of memory.

_Colors and sounds and lips and teeth and it had to be a dream because Mari never kissed him like_ that_. Hands and tongues and moans and sighs and 'I'm sorry, I'm _so _sorry."_

He managed to shut off his alarm and he half-rolled half-fell out of bed. Everything was too bright and too loud and he was _never ever_ drinking whatever he had last night again. Of course, he'd have to ask Mari what it was, as he couldn't possibly remember. His jeans were lying in a pile on the floor next to the foot of his bed and his shirt was crumpled over the chair that belonged to his desk. He managed to dress himself and even get a bit of breakfast before he trudged out the door.

The day seemed to drag on and on, but maybe that was the migraine he had brewing doing the talking. Well. Thinking. A vague unease settled in as closing time drew near: Mari hadn't called. She always called him so they could meet for lunch, or not if she was swamped or he was, but his mobile had remained silent. There was nothing, no text, no message, no missed calls.

"Everything alright, John?" Melissa asked. She was a sweet girl in her second year of Uni, paying for her flat by answering the phones and scheduling appointments at the clinic. She was also, unfortunately, quite observant.

"Sure, great. Has Mari called?" he replied, trying to sound casual.

Melissa shook her head. "No, sorry. Were you expecting her?"

"Sort of, yeah." He shook himself. "She must just be busy."

He called her on the tube ride home six times. She didn't answer once.

* * *

He checked his the answering machine and his email and then his mobile when he woke up the next morning. Still nothing. Panic was starting to set in, the sharp, coppery taste of it dancing on the back of his tongue (and oh he knew that flavor well). He dialed her mobile and a mechanical voice informed him cheerfully that the number he was trying to reach had been disconnected. John frowned. It had been fine yesterday. He must have made a mistake, but when he redialed (after checking the napkin from their first meeting which remained taped to his desk) he received the same message. John tried emailing her. Two minutes later his message was returned to his inbox with an error: there was no user registered with that address. He didn't bother with landline, she didn't have one, thought they were archaic and overpriced. He called in sick. Something was wrong, completely and totally wrong. Was this what Sarah felt like when Moriarty grabbed him and strapped that C4 vest on? Did every possible permutation of ever possible future run through her mind (and did most of those futures end with someone she cared about dead in a gutter)?

He went to the British Library. As he walked through the doors John realized that he'd never seen Mari at work. He'd been to her flat (a little one-bedroom in a decent part of town not far from his) loads of times, but she always met him at the tube station.

If he had been in less of a hurry and if he hadn't been picturing her dead in a thousand imaginative ways he would have been awed by the Library. It was vast. There were millions of books held on shelves that stretched to the ceiling and art collections and even cozy little nooks set out of the grandeur, little oases of the mundane. He might have paused to look at the works of art scattered through the spaces—sculptures and drawings and paintings, pieces of an immense and circulating collection. But he didn't notice any of that. He pounced on the first person he could find who looked like they were working and asked if he could speak to Mari Prentice.

The man, boy really, frowned. "Sorry sir, but I'm not familiar with a Mari Prentice. Let me ask."

"She works in acquisitions," he called after the boy. By the time he returned John felt like he'd worn a hole in the smooth tile floor with his pacing.

"I'm sorry, sir," the boy said apologetically, "but there is no Mari Prentice here."

The words failed to register. John stared at him. "What?"

"We've no record of a Mari Prentice being employed," the boy explained, "not for the past ten years."

John closed his mouth so hard his teeth clicked. "Oh." He took a deep breath and it seemed to fill him, inflate him. His back straightened, his shoulders squared, and his hands curled into loose fists. "Well. Thank you."

"Can I help you with anything else?" the boy inquired.

"No, I'm afraid not," John replied. Then he turned on his heel and walked back the way he came. His step didn't waver, his shoulders didn't sag. His eyes remained fixed straight ahead as his mind raced. She couldn't be gone, she _couldn't_. They'd gone out last night! They had, because he didn't drink alone and there was no way he could have drunk enough to get _that_ hung-over with anyone else. So. They went out. He got drunk. He went home, and—he froze. And when he woke his pillow smelled like her, like the soft, floral scent she wore. He'd asked if it was roses and she'd laughed a bright, joyous sound that he didn't hear nearly often enough. And his bed smelled like her. But there was nothing to suggest she'd been there, no note, no call, no little bit of her besides the ghost of a fragrance.

_Why?_ Sherlock (and _finally_ he could remember without feeling like someone had knifed him in the stomach, had knocked his legs out from under him and kicked him while he was down) had come and gone as he pleased, had disappeared for days. Mari wasn't like that. She didn't wander off or get distracted or caught up in a case.

But why would she lie to him? Why would she leave?

* * *

John made his way to her flat on autopilot. He'd walked there so many times over the past six months that it was second nature. Her building was set slightly back from the street and small. Like Baker Street the house had been converted into three flats, and Mari lived in 503A. Unlike Baker Street she had her own entrance in the back, up a set of old wooden stairs that led to a bit of a patio. She picked the flat for that patio, for a space that she could pull a chair out onto and look up at the stars (what she could see of them through the light and fog of London).

He paused for a moment in front of the door. She'd painted it a deep blue after she moved in, said something about how every place she'd ever called home had a blue door. Maybe he was overreacting. Maybe she'd said the British Library but meant a different one, maybe that was just a nickname. Maybe she'd forgotten to pay her bill and her internet and phone were shut off. Maybe she'd had a family emergency and had to leave. Maybe he'd open the door and find her sitting room immaculate and her kitchen a mess, or business as usual. Maybe she'd be sitting on the sofa having a cuppa and give him a look like he'd dribbled on his shirt when he told her what happened. And maybe Sherlock would ring him and ask to come to tea and oh, would John and Mari mind terribly if he brought the Woman with him?

He was delaying. John knew this. He took a breath, straightened his shoulders, and slid the key home. It clicked into place and the lock turned smoothly. The door opened with a creak—it always did—and John was left looking at an empty flat. It was gone. All of her furniture, her knick-knacks, every sign that someone had lived here had been swept away. The walls were white—she _hated_ white walls; she'd painted them a warm sort of gold as soon as she moved in, just like the door. The sofa where they'd watched horrible science fiction movies (well, he'd watched, she'd laughed and laughed) and had a cuppa hundreds of times was gone. The pictures that littered the top of her curio cabinet—Mari and her mum, Mari and her mum and her stepdad, Mari and her little brother, and the one photo she never mentioned, never looked at except when she thought he wasn't watching: Mari and a man in a brown pinstriped suit and tan overcoat—Mari with the biggest smile he'd ever seen wreathing her face whilst she burrowed into the man's side and he wrapped one arm around her, a crooked grin pulling the corner of his mouth up.

It was the same in every room. Any trace of her, even her scent, was gone. Everything was pristine, immaculate, ready to welcome a new tenant. John thought he might be sick. The world was spinning around him, worse than when he was drunk and he had to put a hand against the wall to steady himself. His legs shook and his knees felt weak and he closed his eyes against the vertigo that threatened to overwhelm him. She was _gone_.

But people don't do that, his mind asserted. People don't vanish off the face of the Earth! They leave things behind to mark their existence, little things—faces in photos, letters unsent, bills and jobs and friends and family—except for her. Her dad died when she was tiny, her mum and stepdad and brother in an accident years ago. She didn't mention any friends, seemed to live an insular life.

Her apartment was clean, her job was a bust, and she had no one to miss her, no one but him. And he knew what he had to do.

* * *

Being Sherlock's blogger had its perks, John thought as the officer behind the desk waved him through. One of those was that everyone at the station knew him. Of course, the downside was that everyone knew him and his position on Moriarty, but thankfully most of them were tactful enough to keep their scorn to themselves. Still, to be safe, he avoided Anderson. John Watson considered himself to be extremely disciplined, but he couldn't promise he wouldn't punch the sniveling CSI in the face if he saw the man.

D.I. Gregory Lestrade was in his office, thankfully. John knew he must look a state—eyes wild, hands clenched, walking fast enough to draw raised eyebrows and frowns from the cubicles around him. He remembered to know, barely, and Greg looked up.

"John," he said, surprise evident in his face and voice. "Come in. Have a seat."

"Mari's gone," John told Greg after he shut the door. He remained standing.

Sympathy surfaced on the detective's face. "You two broke up then?"

John denied the suggestion with a sharp shake of his head. "No, not like that. She's _gone_ Greg, she'd disappeared!"

That got his friend's attention. Greg sat up straighter and folded his hands on his desk. "When you say 'disappeared?'"

"I mean she's vanished!" John snapped back. "Completely and totally!"

Greg held up a hand. "Slow down, and start from the beginning."

John did. He told his friend the whole story—waking up with a hangover and no memory of the previous night, calling her and receiving no response, discovering the next day that her phone and email had been disconnected, the disaster that was visiting her job, and the revelation of going to her flat and finding it deserted. To his credit Greg listened and refrained from letting any disbelief show on his face.

"Right," he said after John had finished. "This really isn't my division, but I know some people and I'll tell them to look into it." He laid a comforting hand on John's shoulder. "We'll find her. D'you have a picture? That always makes it easier."

John shrugged helplessly. "I don't. I don't have anything."

"That's all right, I'm sure we've got one on file. Any next of kin? Friends in the area?

"No one," John replied, though he wondered about the man in the photo, the one Mari never mentioned. Who was he? Where was he? Could he help? "Her dad died when she was little and her mum and stepdad and younger brother died years ago. She's got no friends that I know of."

"Well," Greg said kindly, "she's got you, and that's a sight better than some that we've brought home." He squeezed John's shoulder and then removed his hand. "Go get some sleep—you look like the walking dead. I'll ring you if we find anything."

* * *

The phone call came the next day, but it wasn't the one John had been hoping for.

"Hello," he answered.

"John, it's Greg." The D.I. paused. "How do you spell Mari's name?"

John told him. "It's Marion, but she goes by Mari," he finished.

The line was silent for a moment and then John heard a murmured discussion, like someone had covered the microphone with his hand. "Are you sure?" Greg asked finally.

John rolled his eyes. "Yes, of course I'm sure. I've been seeing her for six months, Greg, I think I know how to spell her name!"

"Right." There was a heaviness to his friend's voice that raised alarm bells in John's mind. "I'm sorry, mate, but the only Marion Prentice we've got records of was a 96 year-old widow who died three years ago. There's no other name she used, maybe a first name that she hated?"

John shook his head before he realized that Greg wasn't here and thus couldn't see. "No," he said finally, when the constriction in his throat had eased enough to let him speak. "There's nothing. Thanks for looking." And he hung up. For a while he stared at the wall, unseeing. It was like he'd been thrown back into the days just after Sherlock's death. The world was surging around him, spinning out of control, and he had nothing to hold on to. There was no Greg and Molly and Mrs. Hudson left to ground him. He'd been cut loose, set adrift.

And not for the first time he wondered if he, John Hamish Watson, had gone mad.

* * *

For a week John existed in a sort of limbo, caught between hope and despair, anger and fear, and mired in confusion. He took the tube to work, endured the pitying stares and whispers of his coworkers (news spread fast in a small clinic, just like a small town), and returned to an empty flat and no sign of Mari. For a week he waited—until he opened the paper one morning and his eyes found the headline: Serial Murderer Strikes Again. He read the article, of course, but when the reporter mentioned the address he froze. It was Mari's building. The landlords, a nice young husband and wife, had been murdered in their beds. The tenants of the second flat, 503 B, had been on vacation, and 503 A had been recently vacated. It was the latest in a string of murders that were seemingly unconnected—a string of murders that Greg had mentioned when John brought Mari to meet him and Molly. Mari had been interested, unnaturally so. And when Mrs. Hudson mentioned that she'd recently rented the apartment John and Sherlock used to share Mari had seemed distracted and almost nervous. She'd been jumpy ever since, always looking over her shoulder—and then they'd gone out and she'd disappeared. John threw down the paper with a curse. How could he have missed that? It wasn't a normal breakup, just vanishing! How could he have missed how on edge she'd been lately?

Someone was after her, someone dangerous, someone willing to kill innocent people in order to get to her. A muscle in John's jaw twitched. Well, whoever it was would have to go through him first.

John Watson figured that he could have comfortably gone the rest of his life without seeing Mycroft Holmes again. Unfortunately, Mycroft was his best hope of finding Mari. The police had proved useless, he had no idea where to look himself—who better to ask than the man behind the curtain? And besides, he could play the guilt card, remind the elder Holmes that it was almost entirely his fault that his brother committed suicide. It was a low blow, but John was desperate and not a little angry, and watching Mycroft's face fall would give him a little satisfaction.

John found Mycroft at the Diogenes Club and this time he managed to not get thrown out, seeing as how he now knew the rules included no talking in certain areas. Mycroft looked tired. As ever his face was fixed in bland, polite lines, but there were lines at the corners of his eyes that hadn't been there before and dark circles beneath.

"To what do I owe the pleasure?" Mycroft asked dryly.

John had no patience for pleasantries. "I need your help."

"Really?" Mycroft seemed genuinely surprised. "I hadn't expected to see you again after our—parting."

"I still think it's your fault," John replied, his voice low and angry. "But there's no one else I can go to, and this is important, maybe national security important."

Mycroft gestured to the decanter of brandy that sat on a side table. John shook his head. The other man shrugged and poured himself a few finger's worth over ice. "I'm listening."

"It has to do with the murders," John began, and the story of Mari's disappearance followed.

"You think they're connected." It was not a question. Mycroft regarded him levelly.

John nodded sharply. "I think they're following her. I think she's running from something."

"Wouldn't it be safer to let her go?" Mycroft inquired.

"Whoever she is," John replied, "she's my friend and she's in danger. She shouldn't have to face that alone."

"You're not going to let this go, are you?" The other man's voice was resigned.

A hint of a smile tugged one corner of John's lips up. "Do I really strike you as the sort of man to do that?"

Mycroft shook his head. "No, John, not you. Not even if it was the wisest choice. I said it when we first met—you're very loyal." He leaned forward. "But let me give you some advice: caring is not an advantage."

John clenched his jaw. "Maybe not to you," he managed to bite out.

Mycroft sighed. "I'll look into it. Give my regards to Mrs. Hudson."

John nodded once, turned on his heel, and left.

* * *

John climbed the stairs to his flat wearily. Really, the next time he felt the desire to move he was going with a nice, garden level place. He fumbled for his key—and then stopped. There was light shining out from beneath the door to his flat. He _never_ left the lights on. It was habit, part of his routine, part of his history as a soldier. Mari joked about it, how everything in his flat was always in its place and how every time he left he went 'on tour' making sure that the windows were closed and locked and the lights were off. John glanced at the door. No sign of forced entry, no scratches around the lock that he'd learned were signs of a lock pick. Whoever was waiting for him had to have had a key. His hand went instinctively to where he'd clip the holster for his revolver to his hip, but it wasn't there. After months of not living with Sherlock he'd gotten out of the practice of carrying a gun. He did, however have the element of surprise. John took a deep breath, slid his key into the lock and threw open the door.

Mari was sitting at his kitchen table with a steaming mug in front of her. He stood in the doorway, frozen in shock. Her hair was shorter and blonde. Her clothes were dark—black jeans and a worn leather jacket and a red camisole shirt and what looked like black combat boots. She looked completely unlike herself.

And then she turned to look at him. "Hello John," she said quietly. "We need to talk."

He almost laughed. The situation was absurd! She vanished for over a week and then he found her here like it was any other day! "Yes," he snapped. "Yes I would say so."

"Close the door," she ordered, and slid the mug across to the seat across from her. "We don't' have long."

"What, no 'sorry I vanished and made you think I was dead?'" he demanded, but he sat and took the mug, more out of habit than anything.

"I didn't exactly have time to explain!" she replied.

"You do now," John pointed out. "So start talking."

"If I told you everything you'd think I'd gone stark raving mad," Mari replied sadly. "That's okay, though. If I was you I'd think so too." She worried her bottom lip with her teeth and searched his face for something only she could see. "Well, first thing's first. Marion Prentice was my gran. My name's Rose, Rose Tyler, and according to this universe—I'm dead." She gestured to his laptop, which lay on the end of the table. "You can look, if you like. Rose Marion Tyler, born 1987 to Pete and Jackie Tyler, died in 2007 at the Battle of Canary Wharf."

"You're looking well for a dead woman," he commented dryly. "And what do you mean, 'this universe?'"

She flashed him a smile. "That's part of those things-that-will-make-you-think-I'm-mad. You're taking the name bit rather well."

He shrugged. "I've just spent more than a week thinking you were dead in a ditch somewhere. I got the message that you weren't who you said you were after your job and the police had never heard of you."

Mari—Rose—winced. "I'm sorry, John," she said quietly, and reached across the table to lay one hand on top of his. "I really am. I wanted to tell you—but it wasn't safe."

He raised an eyebrow. "And this is?"

"No," she snapped back. "But you were supposed to forget! If you hadn't gotten so bloody drunk the retcon would have taken, and you'd have woken up remembering a nasty break up. Instead you kicked up a fuss and now—" She took a breath and, with great effort, calmed herself. "Now they've connected you with me."

John's fingers clenched around his mug. "Who is they, M-Rose?" he demanded.

She shook her head. "I don't know," she told him. "I've never seen them, but they're following me." Her eyes fixed on an invisible spot on the wall. She looked haunted. "Ever since I got back, they've been following me. I can slip past them for a while, but they always find me, eventually. And then—then someone dies." She met his eyes then, fierce and determined. "You're a good man, John, and I'm _not_ going to get you killed. I tried to protect you, but you're so _stubborn_! You were supposed to forget me, to go back to your life of telly and the clinic and all of that."

"I don't want that!" he yelled, and for the first time in six months he realized the truth. His comfortable, stable life was suffocating him. He longed for the adrenaline, the heart-pounding adventure that living with Sherlock had brought. It had been annoying and tedious and occasionally terrifying—but never boring. He was drowning in the mundane, ordinary life he had built.

"Doesn't matter now," Rose commented. "They've linked the two of us—they'll be coming for you soon. They'll try and use you to get to me."

"What do we do?" John asked.

Rose stood. "We go to Ealing."

He frowned. "Ealing? What's in Ealing?"

Rose grinned at him. "Sarah Jane Smith."


	3. Chapter 3

__A/N: And here's chapter three! Sorry it took so long, my muse was having a good time darting back and forth between two versions. As usual, nothing you recognize belongs to me! Enjoy! :D

* * *

_"What do we do?" John asked._

_Rose stood. "We go to Ealing."_

_He frowned. "Ealing? What's in Ealing?"_

_Rose grinned at him. "Sarah Jane Smith."_

* * *

It was the first time that (she wasn't Mari, he needed to stop thinking of her as Mari) Rose had mentioned anyone outside of her family. Logically John knew she had to have friends (because she wasn't Sherlock, although she also wasn't who he'd thought she was), but it was still odd hearing her mention one by name. Sarah Jane Smith was, apparently, an investigative reporter for the Times. The name sounded vaguely familiar—perhaps Sherlock had mentioned her. He'd always had a bit of a love/hate relationship with the press; they never seemed to pick up on the details he believed to be crucial. Of course, John could see how the consistency of tobacco ash found at the scene of a murder might be filed under minutiae, but then he wasn't Sherlock Holmes.

So they were on their way to Ealing. He'd rented a car because Rose said they would need one and he was driving because she, apparently, hadn't gotten her license. "Not in this universe, anyway," she'd muttered and he really should be concerned about his sanity, because he was taking orders from a woman who had consistently lied to him and proved that she was wrapped up in something _extremely_ dangerous. It was odd—not the danger, he'd been a soldier after all and then Sherlock seemed to attract trouble—no, the driving was odd. Sherlock had always been the one to drive; his compulsive need for control wouldn't allow him to let anyone else dictate the route they took or the speed at which they traveled.

On second thought, John was glad he was the one driving because Rose was asleep. She looked older, he realized, more tired. Worn, although that could be the makeup. She'd caked it on thick. "Disguise," she'd told him when he commented on her new look, "is the art of hiding in plain sight." He'd gotten chills then, because she'd reminded him so strongly of Sherlock (and paintings and assassins who squeezed the life out of you and constellations and children dressed up as bombs). She twitched in her sleep and murmured something under her breath. In her new clothes and makeup, with her dyed hair and strange mannerisms she looked nothing like the woman John knew. But then, he didn't really know her at all.

* * *

Rose woke when he turned off the car. Thirteen Bannerman Road, Ealing, looked startlingly normal, but then John had lived with Sherlock long enough to know that extraordinary events often happened in ordinary places—like a community swimming pool, or a hospital, or a basement flat, or an art gallery. She stretched and a huge yawn made her jaw pop.

"We here then?" she asked. He nodded. "Right." She worried her bottom lip with her teeth and stared at the house in front of them. It looked like a nice place. It was a red brick house and different from the others on Bannerman Road, like the rest of the street had been bombed out and it was the only remnant of the original houses. Maybe it was.

John waited for Rose to take the lead. She seemed hesitant, almost nervous as she slid from the car and shut the door behind her. "Is she expecting us?" he asked as they walked to the front door.

"She told me to find her, if I needed to," Rose replied. "I'd only just met her, but then blowing up a school together forms a sort of bond, and anyway, she's more like a—a comrade in arms."

"You blew up a _school_?" His voice rose, incredulous. "What were you back then, a terrorist?"

That drew a laugh from her, although he was entirely uncertain as to why. "It depends on where they were standing. The aliens who were tryin' to use the children t'solve the God Equation? Yeah, they did, but the kids didn't."

They'd reached the stoop. John frowned at her. "Aliens? What are you on about?" _Are you barking_? His unspoken question hung in the air between them.

Her face fell back into serious lines. "I know I haven't been entirely honest with you, John."

"Entirely?" he asked, sarcasm thick in his voice.

She rolled her eyes. "Yes, okay, I've lied to you about a lot, but I'm not lying about this: aliens are real. There's a great big universe out there and it's full of life, teeming. Remember Downing Street? That pig-alien the papers said was a hoax?"

"Yeah," he replied. Doubt was creeping in.

"It was as hoax," Rose told him, "but it was put on by real aliens. They were called the Slitheen, and they wanted to start a nuclear war so they could turn the Earth into spaceship fuel."

"So they blew up Ten Downing Street?" he shot back.

She looked a bit embarrassed at that. "No, actually, that was how we stopped them."

"You're mad," he said with a laugh—but it wasn't at all funny. "Christ, you're mad and I'm mad for following you."

"I can prove it!" she snapped and rang the doorbell with more force than strictly necessary. "God, he was right. Humans will believe whatever the people in authority want them to believe, but they won't see what's right in front of their faces!"

"Um, hello?" They both turned back to regard the boy who was standing in the doorway. "Can I help you?" He looked to be about thirteen years old, with mousy brown hair and brown eyes, but there was something vaguely unsettling about him.

Rose blinked at the boy, obviously surprised. "Hi, is Sarah Jane home?"

The boy regarded her suspiciously. "Maybe. Who's looking for her?"

She ran a hand through her hair. It was a nervous gesture, John knew. He'd seen her do it a hundred times before, but it looked odd with her hand in blonde hair instead of brown. "Tell her it's Rose, would you sweetheart?" she asked. The boy nodded and disappeared.

They stood behind the closed door, waiting, in silence. Usually quiet times between them were comfortable, laced with the knowledge that they didn't need to fill the space with unnecessary words, the knowledge that they didn't need to pretend. It was not like that now. The silence stretched out in front of them, a chasm that neither seemed willing to cross.

A voice drifted out from behind the door. "Look," a woman was saying as the lock turned with a metallic groan. "I don't know who you think you are, but that's not funny at all. That's—" and the door was open. A petite brunette woman, perhaps fifty years old, glared at them. But then her gaze shifted to Rose. Her eyes widened and she gasped. "Rose!"

A small smile curved her lips. "Hello Sarah Jane."

* * *

Sarah Jane Smith was a force to be reckoned with, John Watson thought as she ushered them inside. She'd gone from shocked to mum-mode in ten seconds flat and all the while she was asking rather penetrating questions. "When did you get back? _How_ did you get back? What's happened? Who's your friend?"

Rose answered them in order as Sarah Jane led them into a cozy kitchen. "About a year ago, it's a long story, it's complicated, John Watson."

"Really?" Sarah Jane held out her hand. "Nice to meet you, Dr. Watson."

She knew who he was, John realized, but she made no snide comments and gave him no looks of pity. He shook her hand. "And you, Ms. Smith."

"Sarah Jane, please," she corrected. "Ms. Smith is so formal, and we're all friends here." _Right_? She asked with a glance to Rose, who nodded.

"I didn't know you had a son," Rose commented as they sat at the kitchen table.

Sarah Jane smiled. "Yes, Luke. I didn't when I met you—he's adopted. It's a bit of a long story. I sent him over to Rani's house to do homework so we can talk freely."

"Yes," John agreed. "Openly and honestly. Sounds like a plan."

Sarah Jane caught the edge to his voice, he could tell, and the way that Rose's jaw twitched. "Why don't I make us a cuppa?" she suggested and stood. John wondered if making tea was some sort of nervous tic for these people. Ma—Rose did it whenever she was upset.

"That would be lovely," she replied with obvious relief. So a few minutes later John found himself with a steaming mug and three chocolate biscuits. He was British. He enjoyed tea, but Christ, had these two never head of coffee? Sarah Jane set her mug down on the smooth wood of the table and slid into the seat across from Rose, who wrapped her hands around her mug and stared into the amber-colored liquid like it held the secrets of the universe.

"He came to see me," Sarah Jane said as the silence became unbearable. "Just after Canary Wharf; he stopped by." She chuckled. "I knew something was up then, because he never does that, never just stops in." She sipped her tea. "I saw your name on the list of the dead—I suppose I was expecting him."

John didn't miss the catch in Rose's breath, or the way her hands tightened convulsively around her mug. Her voice, when she spoke, was surprisingly level. "How was he?"

"You know how he is," Sarah Jane replied. Her tone was fond but exasperated and perhaps a little sad. "He can talk for England without ever saying anything, well, anything important."

The tea was a good idea, John thought, it gave him something to do with his hands while the women next to him had their infuriatingly vague conversation.

"He was—flat," Sarah Jane continued. "Lost. Sort of drifting. He'd beam and babble but then he'd just stare—at the wall, at the floor, out the window, and he looked like he was never going to smile again." Rose brought the mug to her lips. Sarah Jane glanced at John. There was understanding in her warm brown eyes, and sympathy. She understood, because John thought he might have loved Mari and that maybe he could love this stranger she'd turned into—but he was fairly certain she was already in love with someone else. Sarah Jane, he thought, had been there, perhaps with the other half of this tragic story.

When Rose didn't comment Sarah Jane smiled wistfully. "He asked me to come with him, for old time's sake."

Rose cocked her head to the side and set her mug back down. "Why didn't you? That's the second time he's asked, not many people turn him down twice."

"I've got a life, here," the older woman replied, and it was true. She fit in the house. She belonged. "He's mad and brilliant and wonderful—but I've outgrown him. Besides, can you imagine a child on the TARDIS?"

"I'm sorry," John interrupted. "But who is 'he?'"

"He," Rose said, "is the man we have to find. He's the Doctor, and he isn't a man at all."

* * *

John Watson thought of himself as an intelligent, rational person. He'd always been solid and practical and firmly grounded in what he could see and touch. That's what made him a good doctor and a good soldier. He didn't put any faith in superstitions, and he was rather ambivalent to the existence of a higher power. He believed in the people he knew, the people who had his back. He believed in Sherlock Holmes, and until recently he'd believed in Mari Prentice. But now she was someone else and she was asking him to believe in things that sounded, if he was honest, more than a little mad.

She wanted him to believe that aliens were real, that natural disasters and terrorist attacks weren't that at all—they were battles between human forces and extraterrestrials. She wanted him to believe that one of those aliens traveled through space and time in a ship that looked like a police box from the sixties—that he was over nine hundred years old, that he saved the universe on practically a daily basis, and that he was the only one who could save them. From what? John wanted ask, but he didn't.

Instead, he took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. Military discipline had always been his fallback, it kept his voice even and soft when he wanted to shout and occasionally prevented him from strangling his flat mate, back when he lived with Sherlock. Now it kept him from laughing in Rose's face, because something told him that wouldn't go over well.

"You don't believe us," Sarah Jane said with a bit of a smile.

"No," John agreed. "No I can't say I do."

She stood. "Come with me. I may have something that will change your mind."

Sarah Jane led them through what looked like a secret passageway and into a spacious attic. Or it would be spacious, if it wasn't crammed full of cardboard boxes.

Rose opened one and held up a few papers. "What is all this?"

"Just some old casefiles from UNIT," Sarah Jane replied as she ran a hand over the tops of the boxes. She appeared to be searching for something. "They went digital a few months back and I managed to convince Alistair to let me have the hard copies."

"A soldier for a soldier," Rose murmured. "No wonder they got on so well."

"Oh." Sarah Jane blinked. "He told you about his time at UNIT?"

A mysterious sort of smile curved Rose's lips. "Not as such."

"What's UNIT?" John asked. He was trailing behind them, looking rather lost and just a bit irritated.

"Unified Intelligence Task Force," Sarah Jane responded. "They're a secret organization designed to handle alien incursions and they answer directly to the United Nations. Aha!" She pulled out several files and handed them to John. He flipped open the first one and froze. It was the Ten Downing Street affair. There'd been a huge to-do over the destruction of the building. It was, after all, where the Prime Minister and the Cabinet conducted much of the daily business of the United Kingdom. The manila folder contained text documents (memos, alerts, interviews), photographs (of prominent people: Harriet Jones, those later determined to be aliens, even Rose and a strange man in a leather jacket), and what looked to be an autopsy of one of the aliens. The next folder was full of what looked to be specs—technology, weapons that couldn't possibly exist, even a space ship. After that it was architectural documents, surveys and blueprints for one Canada Square—Canary Wharf.

John looked up. "What is all this?"

"Proof," Sarah Jane replied and handed him another folder. "Six months ago a hospital was taken to the moon."

"The Royal Hope," John agreed as he automatically took the folder. "Wasn't that some sort of hoax—mass hallucination brought on by exposure to toxic gas?"

Sarah Jane snorted derisively. "You lived with Sherlock Holmes and you believe the official story?"

He was about to reply with something suitably sarcastic when a soft "oh" pulled their attention back to Rose. She was holding a thick binder. It was open and she traced something with one hand, her eyes wide and fixed on what she saw. Her hands were shaking and the rustle of papers was loud in the sudden silence.

Sarah Jane's lips tightened into a thin line. "I'd forgotten about that," she murmured.

"What is it?"

"Those are the records from the Battle of Canary Wharf," she said after a long moment had passed. "I'm sorry, Rose. I forgot I had them."

"S'alright—he just—" her words trailed off into a quivering sigh. "He was always so good at keeping it together, like it would kill him to let anyone know he was hurting. An' here—here there was no one left to see."

It was a photo, John realized, a photo in one of those protector sheaths which was good, because Rose was crying and mascara-laden tears landed on the plastic covering. She didn't seem to notice; her attention was fixed on the picture's subject. It was from CCTV, so it was black and white, but he didn't need colors to know who it was. There was only one person who could affect her like that—the man from the picture, the only picture that didn't feature her family and the only picture she never mentioned. The camera had captured him mid-stride, his back to a smooth pale wall. His hands were shoved into his pockets casually, his shoulders slumped, but it was his face that drew John's attention. It was flat, completely flat—completely empty. He looked like a man who had lost everything. John could relate.

"It was worse sometimes," Rose sighed. John couldn't tell if she was talking to him or herself. "Than dying, I mean. Because he was still out there, and all I had to do was close my eyes and imagine." She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. When she opened them her face had smoothed back into composed lines and her eyes were dry, if bright. "Do you believe me now?"

John knew when he was beaten. Her story was incredible—but the mountains of evidence that Sarah Jane possessed all seemed to agree with her. A sardonic smile tugged one corner of his mouth upwards. "It seems I've got little choice."

Her answering smile was a bit shaky. "Good. Then let's get to the present." She closed the folder and set it down gently. "I'm dying."

"What?" Sarah Jane demanded. John could only stare at her.

Rose waved a hand negligently. "That's not the problem."

"I'm pretty sure your death would be classified as problematic," he disagreed.

She made a face. "Yeah, well, it's a problem—it's not _the_ problem, more like a side effect." One hand slipped into her jacket pocket, and pulled out a slim circle of metal. It was roughly the size of her palm and three inches thick in the center. It tapered out to a blunted point at the edges, a bit like a flying saucer, and it was covered with swirling circular designs. "This," Rose told them, her voice deadly serious, "is the problem."

Sarah Jane's eyes widened. "Is that?"

Rose nodded. "Gallifreyan. It's Time Lord technology, a relic from the War."

John could hear the capital letters in her tone. He really hated when people danced around a subject. Sherlock used to do it constantly, make little remarks, flash that annoying little smirk he got when he knew something you didn't. John's entire world had just been shifted in a course he wasn't entirely comfortable with, he was standing in a stranger's attic with things that he would have _sworn_ yesterday couldn't have existed, and it was well past tea and he hadn't had anything to eat since lunch. He was, to be blunt, not in the best of moods, and he was tired of the ambiguity and drama that seemed to accompany his life as of late.

"Can we just cut to the chase?" he asked with some annoyance. "What is it and what does it have to do with your imminent death?"

"It's something that shouldn't exist," Rose replied. "It's an echo, a leftover, a bit that slipped through the cracks. It's a piece of the War." She ran a hand through her hair, unconsciously mimicking the Doctor. "There have been so many wars—but imagine one so terrible that the only way to end it was to destroy all sides, to cleave it out of Time itself and lock it away before it ripped the universe apart at the seams. Imagine a war when Time itself had turned against you, and your soldiers fought and died only to be brought back and fight and die again, a thousand times, a million times. Imagine that—because if we don't find the Doctor that's what's going to happen. It was the first war, the last war, the war that never was—the war that never ends."

John stared at the disk. It seemed—wrong, somehow. The designs seemed to shift and twist before his eyes. He looked away, nauseas. What she was describing, well, it sounded like the closest thing he could imagine to Hell.

"How does that connect with you?" Sarah Jane inquired. She could feel it to, that there was something Rose wasn't saying.

Rose smiled softly. Her eyes traced the swirling circles without any of the vertigo they seemed to inspire in John. "Did he ever tell you why he regenerated, Sarah?" She didn't wait for the woman to respond. "Because when I met him he didn't look like that—all wild hair an' pinstripes an' pretty. He was different—older, well, older looking, an' he had these ears, daft, he used to call them, an' he favored leather. His people," she explained for John's benefit, "they had this trick. When they were injured fatally they could change, literally change, their entire body. Brand new look, brand new quirks, same person. He killed himself to save me. We were trapped hundreds of thousands of years in the future, trapped with no way out." She laughed softly. "Well, I thought there was no way out. We were going to die—but he tricked me. Put me in his ship and sent me home. Wish I could remember the look on his face when I came back."

"How?" Sarah Jane's eyes were wide. "Don't tell me he taught you how to fly the TARDIS. That's his ship," she clarified. "It stands for Time and Relative Dimension in Space."

Rose shook her head. "Oh no, it was much simpler than that. I just wanted to talk to her, to tell her to take me back to him—but it didn't go quite as planned." She frowned. "I dunno how to describe this next part. There's this—this place I guess, called the Time Vortex, but it's more than that. It's the raw power of space and time and _nothing_ in the universe is more powerful than time. It's how the TARDIS travels, how anyone who travels in time moves—she goes into the Vortex. And I had Mickey pull her apart with a tow truck and I absorbed all of it—the entire Vortex. The Doctor took it out of me and he regenerated, because no one's meant to hold that kind of power. Our bodies aren't capable sustaining it—we'd burn like flashpaper."

John fidgeted. It all sounded so unbelievable. If it was any other day—but it wasn't. He almost wanted to laugh, except that it seemed the fate of the world hinged on what Rose was saying.

"So he took it out of me, because he was determined that I would live," she continued. "But I had all of space and time in my head. I knew _everything_, _saw_ everything. And I didn't want to let go." She smiled at them, but it didn't reach her eyes. "I've got a door to the Vortex inside my head, and this little beauty is breaking down the walls between me an' it. If that happens I'll die. Even the way I am now I can't handle the full force of the Vortex for very long. But worse than that—" She held up the disk. "This is designed to take a person out of history, provided it has enough power. The Vortex is basically unlimited power, and if the wrong person gets their hands on this—we're looking at chaos, or worse, Reapers."  
"Reapers?" John asked.

Rose shuddered. "You don't want to know."

"Why would they build something like this?" he continued. "If it would destroy the universe—what possible justification is there for that?"

Sarah Jane shrugged helplessly. "The Doctor didn't speak about his people, not willingly."

"They were old when the universe was young." Rose's voice was soft and dreamy. She had a strange look on her face, like she was somewhere else, as she gazed at the weapon nestled in her hands. "Old and proud, with knowledge but without wisdom, hidden away on their beautiful world—the shining planet of the seven systems. Watching and waiting, ordering the flow of time, bending the laws of physics to their will. The Great Observers, locked in the ivory tower of the Panopticon in the heart of the Citadel." She swayed and John reached out a hand to steady her, but she didn't fall. "Two suns danced in the burnt orange sky as the wind blew soft music through silver trees on the continent of Wild Endeavour. The red grass bowed to the snow-capped hills and those who ruled all that they could see—and never touched it." Something in her tone changed, an edge crept in, an urgency bordering on terror. "And then _they_ came, death machines, engineered to hate and dominate all life. The technology was stolen but not the knowledge—but it didn't matter. They swarmed on the universe like bacteria, devouring all in their path." She was almost shouting and tears dripped down her face unheeded. "The planets fell—dominoes—hate and fear and war, pollution, desperation, _madness_."

Sarah Jane grabbed the disk from Rose and she fell like a puppet with her strings cut. John caught her, more out of reflex than anything, but very nearly dropped her. She was hot, and not like someone with a fever—like she was burning up from the inside out, like her skin was paper wrapped around fire. Her hands were curled half into fists and she shook in his arms.

"Oh god," she muttered and writhed, struggling to cover her ears. "Oh god oh god oh god oh god."

"Rose?" he called. "Rose, it's John. I need you to tell me what's wrong." He'd never seen her like that, never seen her completely break down. It was unnerving, almost more unnerving than finding out that aliens were real; he got the feeling that she didn't crack under pressure. Even in his flat, discussing how she'd been _hunted_ she'd had a sense of calm, a sense of purpose. Now, though—now she seemed lost.

"Rose?" Sarah Jane echoed. For several long moments there was no response and they could only count the seconds as gradually Rose's breathing evened out and the tremors that wracked through slowed—and stopped.

"He never said," she whispered. "God, he never said it felt like that." She leaned on John's arm and then pulled herself upright.

"Take it slowly," he advised. He studied her as she righted herself. Rose reached out to use one of the boxes for support and gasped. "What is it?"

She flexed her hands and winced. "S nothing. I'll be fine."

A wry smile twisted John's lips. "You're a terrible liar, you know." He took one of her hands and gently pried her fingers back. A muscle in his jaw twitched. "_This_," he continued sternly, "this is not nothing." Angry red welts covered her palms, and John would bet they matched the designs on that _thing_.

Rose pulled her hand back. "Just leave it, they'll be fine."

John stared at her. "Rose, those are second degree burns! They'll take weeks to heal and you'll probably have scars."

She shook her head. "They'll be gone in the morning. I heal faster now."

"How fast?" Sarah Jane asked with a calculating look. "As fast as the Doctor?"

"Fast enough," Rose replied softly. "Seriously, John. It's alright. No need to fuss."

He rolled his eyes. "I'm a doctor, Rose. It's my job to fuss, especially when people have strange reactions to alien technology." John made a face. "I can't believe I just said that."

"Give it a few days," Sarah Jane advised. "It takes a bit of getting-used-to."

* * *

"So," Rose began when they were once again settled around Sarah Jane's kitchen table. "That's why we need the Doctor." The device was safely out of sight, tucked back in her jacket pocket. John offered to carry it for her but she'd refused. It was her responsibility, she told him, not his.

"Can't you destroy it?" he asked. Finding this man—alien—had already taken far too long, if Rose's episode was evidence.

She laughed incredulously. "Destroy it, me? John, I can't even _look_ at it for too long. I've got no idea how! When Mycroft first brought it to me I tried everything—fire, ice, encasing it in cement—and nothing helped." She worried her bottom lip with her teeth. "It's working at my head like a lockpick and I can _feel_ the tumblers falling into place."

"So you came to me," Sarah Jane added, "in the hopes that I could tell you how to reach the Doctor."

Rose leaned back in her chair. "Pretty well sums it up, yeah."

The older woman shook her head. "I'm sorry, Rose," she said gently, "but I've got no way to contact him, and neither does UNIT. He just shows up when there's trouble and leaves right after. Half the time they only know he's been here thanks to CCTV images of the TARDIS. Well, and the path of destruction he tends to leave behind."

"I know, but I'd hoped—" She sighed. "I was so _close_ when that hospital was taken. If I had been a little quicker—"

Sarah Jane covered the younger girl's hand with her own. "_I_ can't help you find him—but I might know someone who can." She pulled out a slip of paper, squeezed Rose's hand once, and then began to write. "I have a contact in Cardiff, a former member of Torchwood and apparently a former companion as well. He's situated over the Rift and working to get back to the Doctor himself." She folded the paper in half and laid it in front of Rose. "If anyone can help you, he can."


End file.
